We are so familiar in western culture with the concept that we should never ‘judge a book by its cover’ or assume anything based on appearances that it astonishes me how often we still fall prey to such foolishness. We are so taken with externals and what we assume based on them that it’s amazing we’re able to function on a day-to-day basis without getting smashed like bugs under the weight of our own dimwittedness and the resulting misguided things we do and don’t think–more importantly, what we do and don’t do as a result of those thoughts. How many times do I have to wish I could re-train my presumptuous inclinations away from predetermining what I think of any given situation or person! In reality, what looks like either a foreboding or inviting doorway is nothing more or less than a closed door until I go in through it with thoughts and eyes wide open, to see what really lies on the other side.
I’m thinking of it at the moment especially, I suppose, having seen our pretty, healthy and cheery looking mothers have invisible health reasons both to undergo their surgeries and to worry and/or hurt enough to be willing to undergo surgery rather than just continuing to ‘tough it out’. Neither is a complainer, though thankfully they’re not big on hiding the truth from us beyond probably softening their descriptions of the various medical struggles they’ve undergone over the years nor are they avid players of the martyr game. So I think it’s safe to guess that most people would readily think both of them something nigh unto indestructible, and perhaps they are in spirit if not quite in body. Yet here they are needing to get ‘repaired’ from time to time. It’s a little like those industrial sites that to me look so beguilingly, alluringly palatial and mysterious and exotic the way they’re lit up at night but when in operation during the day are simply hard at work to keep the business intact, bits of their well-used machinery breaking down occasionally as they gradually work their way toward a point they can’t finally pass without reconstruction.
I’m also thinking such thoughts as I live surrounded by family and friends who struggle with innumerable unseen barriers to easy living, full health and happiness. There is the poor student who works long hours at both academic and full-time jobs to get through her education but is harassed for being a ‘spoiled fashionista’ because she looks so perfectly turned out in her work and school clothes. If anyone paid attention, of course, they’d know that the two perfectly kept outfits she wears on alternating days are ones she scrimped to save less than $10 each for from top to toe at a thrift store on her minimum wage income. There is the boy who is bullied by his peers as being a lazy wimp because he doesn’t go out for the soccer team, though any of them who asked might find out that despite his looking so fit he has severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and would be in mortal agony if he even went out for a practice. There is the ‘weird old guy’ down the street that everyone avoids, thinking him creepy and dangerous with his long hair and eye patch and spooky twitch, never bothering to get close enough to discover that he always keeps himself very clean and neatly dressed and runs a small watch repair business out of his house to sustain himself despite his torture and mutilation in his war-torn home country and being too much an outsider to get fine language training once here because people were too displeased with and put off by their imagined version of him.
Bad enough that we assume the worst about so many people and things and fail to discover whether there’s the tiniest bit of factual basis for any such assumptions. The worst is that we may never know what treasures lie within if we don’t make a real investigation. Besides all of those complications of health (mental and physical), circumstance (familial, economic, educational, political) or any number of invisible ‘companions’ that often make it simply miraculous that a given person lives what looks to others like even a marginally ‘ordinary’ life, most people have within them amazing and distinctive forms of unique beauty–talents, passions, depths of character, and just plain reserves of love welling up inside–that we should be avidly seeking to bring out in each other at every opportunity, not to avoid or repress or let be defeated by their personal barriers and boundaries. Least of all, to lie forever undiscovered because we looked at externals and assumed there was no such treasure hidden there.
Art-Colored Glasses
Original poetry, essays, artworks, photographs & musings on whatever moves me…
Art-Colored Glasses 
I always judge my books by their covers! terrible i know but I like orange covers because they look warm on my bookshelves.. treasures on the other hand are everywhere.. awesome process! c
At a practical level, we *have* to make assumptions based on appearances or would never get through a single day. And there’s certainly nothing remotely wrong with having likes and loves that are purely based on our own aesthetic sense! I would never survive let alone smile without my peculiar prejudices. But I know you are an expert at seeing beyond the ‘dust jacket’ of a human, and that is a gift we should all cultivate more. 🙂
Old people in particular tend to be invisible to the “me” generation and yet each would have a long story to tell if asked, which they seldom are. I’ve noticed therefore that they tend to stay quiet and just observe the world and all its foolishness.
Absolutely so, Dennis. It’s far too easy to treat what we don’t know or understand, especially if it’s an unknown person, as invisible. That’s one of the reasons that finally getting an observant oldster to talk is often very like letting a benevolent genie out of its bottle!
I am guilty of purchasing books by their covers.. Going through doors because of their alluring beauty… but, I’d like to believe, I very often have a willing and open mind to the inner beauty in others I meet. It’s so distressful how today’s marketing attempts to quantify one’s value by outer beauty.. and how being different seems to marginalize those who can least bear it. I’m so glad you wrote about this today, it’s a good reminder for all of us!! xoxo Beautiful writing today!!
Being such an outrageous magpie, I must admit to most of my interests and acquaintances and discoveries being due to an initial visual attraction of one sort or another. But I’m trying as I get older (though I will surely never mature) to learn to broaden my palate and my palette, and so be attracted to and get to know a wider range of marvelous people and experiences and things. 🙂
xo!
You’ve really got this figured out:) If we broaden our palates… the range of what we think is “beautiful” is so much more.. thanks for this today!
definitely guilty on the literal (or should that be literary? ) front! But a great post and reminder as to how fallible we humans are, that no matter how hard we try not to judge, we do!
One good thing that may save us humans is that tastes do differ from person to person, so those who love whatever or whoever doesn’t capture my attention can teach me to love them better, and vice versa. 🙂
Thoughtful and signifigant; and a reminder that the opposite is ofthen true as well. The ornate cover may hide nothing but empty drivel, or scathing rants…
Love the train case in that first photo!
Isn’t that a lovely old luggage case! Yes, it happens that I bought that one in a thrift shop when I fell in love with it on the basis only of its looks! Perfect illustration–though I’m happy to say that about 35 years later, I still use the thing constantly and it has proven of great worth in more than just still giving my little old eye-bulbs pleasure. 🙂
Not only have I done it (judged) but have had it done to me. It’s when one goes past the cover to see what is inside that you may find real and wonderful..or weird and wonderful 😉
Suddenly I’m reminded of a bit (in the Chronicles of Narnia, I think) in which a most desirable garden is described as being ‘bigger on the inside than on the outside’–there’s so often far more than we can imagine contained in the package that is a person we’ve yet to know. Hopefully real, weird *and* wonderful!! 🙂
So well said, Kathryn. We have all learned to use our physical eyes to discover beauty; we need to learn to use the eyes of our heart to discover even more.
Spoken by you who have a truly visionary heart, my dear! Thank you.
Things are not always as they may seem– skim milk masquerades as cream. So many judge on the basis of what they think they know about matters which they do not know. Judge not lest ye be judged. You write here of reminders of which we all must be reminded, a writing well written & also well taken by this reader. Thank you for keeping us in moral order, no matter what religion or non-religion or philosophy with which we may be affiliated or associated or opinionated…
I’m especially taken aback daily by the my-way-or-the-highway attitudes of people who purport to represent religions or high-minded ethical philosophies–even if you ignore the uncharitable quality inherent in that approach, it seems ridiculously illogical to think you’re going to persuade anyone to accept, let alone support your cause by being antagonistic! It’s like throwing red paint on fur-wearers and expecting them to respect your belief that wearing fur makes one a mean person!